The politics of climate change

I´m not the only one in this predicament. I know quite a few people my age who fret about carbon footprints and the plight of the polar bear, but whose parents assure them it´s just another Guardianista right-on-athon. The last poll I saw said that that only 41% of people accept that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made.

While this is clearly a problem, I think the left have a tendency to vilify and patronise the sceptics. Climate change scepticism is not a top-down conspiracy by the Lawson dynasty and the oil lobby to manipulate opinion. Most ordinary sceptics would struggle to identify a high-profile ‘denier´ other than Jeremy Clarkson. I suspect it is more the instinctive reaction of a society that traditionally values scepticism of all sorts, much as it does eccentricity, and is mistrustful of officialdom especially when it is asking them to make painful sacrifices for a far-off greater good.

Another factor that has contributed to scepticism, particularly, I suspect, among the older generation, is that they have been led up the garden path before. Over the years, they have been told to brace themselves for a new ice age, a Malthusian population mega-explosion, and the loss of a generation to spongiform brain disease. They were scaremongered into shunning nuclear power only for it to be hastily re-embraced as eco-fashions changed. They´ve been hectored into buying organic and into boycotting GM, while evidence for both positions remains elusive. Furthermore, since the financial crisis, the words ‘according to predictions based on computer models´ no longer command the hushed reverence they once did.

Popular misgivings about global warming may not be scientifically grounded, but they certainly are not stupid. Most sceptics are not scientists but they do know about how science can be sensationalised, manipulated and politically hijacked. The intellectual tools that they are bringing to this are not scientific ones necessary to disprove a theory but the cultural ones of deconstructing a bandwagon. The Climategate emails and the sloppiness and alleged evasiveness of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have had such a corrosive effect on public trust not because they disprove the theory of anthropogenic global warming but because they are seen as the squeaky wheels of an overloaded bandwagon. Anyone who followed the gruesome debacle of Copenhagen – the horse-trading that went on inside the summit to the hysteria outside – could be forgiven for being cynical. The use by climate campaigners of terms like ‘flat earthers´ and, worst of all ‘climate change deniers´ with its implied comparison to Holocaust revisionism is, rightly, seen as an attempt to stigmatise dissent. They have only themselves – not Nigel Lawson or ExxonMobil – to blame for arousing suspicion and resentment.

The task of the government isn´t so much to keep repeating the science, but to persuade people that the science is not politicised groupthink. If people fear that the distinction between objective scientific inquiry and environmental campaigning has been blurred – a fear that Glaciergate has revealed is not 100 per cent fanciful – then the government must demonstrate its commitment to re-enforcing and respecting that divide. There have been suggestions that governments should hand over responsibility for sending representatives to the IPCC to national scientific institutes such as the Royal Society. People were also surprised that the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is not a trained expert in a relevant field. Clearly, the bar should be raised and Pachauri shuffled towards the exit.

Climate change campaigners often seem exasperated that the burden of proof lies with them and not the sceptics. But why? It´s not the sceptics who are asking for huge financial commitments and major lifestyle changes. As I said, I like Ed Miliband, but he has to ask for things nicely.